CHAPTER IV.
"I'LL NOT BELIEVE BUT DESDEMONA'S HONEST."
With a cry that is like nothing human, Sir Victor Catheron leaps forward and tears his fainting wife out of the grasp of the black-bronzed, bearded, piratical-looking young man.
"You villain!" he shouts, hoarse with amaze and fury; "stand back, or by the living Lord I'll have your life! You scoundrel, how dare you lay hands on my wife!"
"Your wife! Yours! Come now, I like that! It's against the law of this narrow-minded country for a woman to have two husbands. You're a magistrate and ought to know. Don't call names, and do keep your temper—violent language is unbecoming a gentleman and a baronet. Inez, what does he mean by calling Ethel his wife?"
"She is his wife," Inez answers, her black eyes glittering.
"Oh, but I'll be hanged if she is. She's mine—mine hard and fast, by jingo. There's some little misunderstanding here. Keep your temper, baronet, and let us clear it up. I married Miss Ethel Dobb in Glasgow, on the thirteenth of May, two years ago. Now, Sir Victor Catheron, when did you marry her."
Sir Victor made no answer; his face, as he stood supporting his wife, was ghastly with rage and fear. Ethel lay like one dead; Juan Catheron, still eminently good-humored and self-possessed, turned to his sister:
"Look here, Inez, this is how it stands: Miss Dobb was only fifteen when I met her first. It was in Scotland. We fell in love with each other; it was the suddenest case of spoons you ever saw. We exchanged pictures, we vowed vows, we did the 'meet me by moonlight alone' business—you know the programme yourself. The time came to part—Ethel to return to school, I to sail for the China Sea—and the day we left Scotland we went into church and were married. There! I don't deny we parted at the church door, and have never met since, but she's my wife; mine, baronet, by Jove! since the first marriage is the legal one. Come, now! You don't mean to say that you've been and married another fellow's wife. 'Pon my word, you know I shouldn't have believed it of Ethel."
"She is reviving," Inez said.